


Little Supernovas

by Fudgyokra



Series: BruDick Week 2020 [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Character Study, I'm not sure what genre to classify this as, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, POV Alternating, POV Outsider, Time Skips, Unconventional Relationship, i guess?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22372348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: "Robin looks happy to be included. Jim does not share even an ounce of the sentiment. 'That's a child,' he intones blandly, shifting his gaze to the Bat's face with one long, weary blink. 'You've brought a child out on the battlefield.'"Or: The Gordons have different opinions on Bruce and Dick's relationship.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Bruce Wayne
Series: BruDick Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610485
Comments: 10
Kudos: 189
Collections: BruDick Week 2020





	Little Supernovas

**Author's Note:**

> Day 3: ~~"You haven’t hugged me in years."~~ | PoV Outsider
> 
> Title and lyrics from Stone Sour's "[Say You'll Haunt Me.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlA3_gEY59s)"

_Little time has come and gone so far,_   
_Little by little who you are._

Batman doesn’t introduce so much as unveil his new ward. Robin materializes from the endless pitch of his mentor’s cape like a colorful version of his namesake, and from the looks of his beaming baby-face, Jim almost expects him to cheep his praises. He looks happy to be included. Jim does not share even an ounce of the sentiment.

“That’s a child,” he intones blandly, shifting his gaze to the Bat’s face with one long, weary blink. “You’ve brought a child out on the battlefield.”

Of course, Batman brushes off his concerns as if they meant nothing, which doesn’t bode well. Either the Caped Crusader has no regard for a child’s life—which Jim doesn’t actually believe, as bad as this situation looks—or he has found a particularly astute crime fighter in a pint-sized package. For a flicker of a second, he wonders if his cohorts are right after all that Batman is just a menace with no ethical boundaries. He is willing to shelve the matter for now, because there are important things to tackle on tonight’s docket, and he doesn’t quite feel like challenging his friend’s codes or his own personal biases when there are punks running around doing god-knows-what in his city.

The last thing he says, without even turning around (because he _knows_ how that will end), is, “You’d better take real good care of that kid, boss.”

He lights a cigarette, feeling like he needs ten, and his second surprise of the night comes to him as a small voice responding with polite conviction. “With all due respect, Officer Gordon, I can take very good care of myself.” And, even though he wheels around quicker than he thinks any human but Batman can move, his wide eyes still catch sight of nothing but empty air.

He hopes that’s a good sign. God knows he needs one after everything he has been through tonight.

* * *

As Barbara gets ready, she remembers the night her father told her about Robin. Two months ago to the day, in fact. It would be decidedly unimpressive of her to have forgotten, especially since the position for which she has applied necessitates good memory. She can remember that and a host of other things her new boss told her, including each stubborn repeat of the word _no_ when she asked to be precisely where she is now. Earning the job is nothing short of a miracle and she treats it as such.

Dad left an hour ago, and the Bat-symbol lighting up the foggy Gotham night is her cue to suit up as well, an equally heroic piece of the crime-solving puzzle. It makes her proud to see her reflection in the mirror, eared cowl and combat boots, imagining the tune her father would sing now that she was part of the team.

“Robin’s a hoot,” he had once told her over dinner. Steak and potatoes with peppered green beans. It is all he really knows how to make, which is why Barbara does most of the cooking. “He’s always saying ‘yes, sir’ and ‘thank you, sir.’ Way more polite than the Bat.”

“So you like the new kid?” Casually probing, nothing suspicious.

Jim had beamed and slurred through a mouthful of food. Very unbecoming. “Oh, he’sh great. Love ‘im tuh bits.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, dad.” A classic evening at the Gordon house.

Well, not tonight.

She slips out of her bedroom window without a sound, catching Batman and his Boy Wonder whispering on the next rooftop over. They immediately split upon her arrival, and she knows by gut feeling alone that they’re talking about her. Robin seems irritated, arms crossed over the front of his cute little uniform, and Batman, as usual, is completely stone-faced. They look as if they’d been caught sharing secrets at a sleepover, which is an oddly charming way of imagining the two of them. It’s also, as she comes to learn, so far from the truth of how they act it would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

Robin gets hollered at a lot. Barbara does too, but she is used to it. The way she sees it, she’s twelve and therefore far more grown than the itty-bitty nine-year-old fighting alongside her, and she can tolerate discipline if it means her skills improve. The boy doesn’t seem to handle it well at all, though.

They have both been at it for a year before Robin—Dick is his name, she discovers, titillated by the knowledge—makes any emotional leeway with the big bad Bat, and it’s the scariest thing Barbara has ever experienced.

The heel of Dick’s pixie boot misses a rainy ledge, and one second he is standing there with them, the next he isn’t. She sees him go down, but her own feet slog through runoff like she’s trying to sprint in a nightmare. By the time she is able to reach out for him, he tips over like a doll. Each of her breaths is noisy, wheezy with effort and hitting her in the chest with a pang on each inhale. She grips the edge where he had disappeared, her gloves filthy with mud, eyes shining brighter than the raindrops. Her scream of anguish gets drowned out by thunder.

At first, she is adamant that it’s already too late. But when Batman descends into the abyss with his grappling gear and the line goes taut for several seconds of heart-thumping suspense, she dares to hope.

Dick is alive.

Barbara’s sobs crest into delirious laughs until the last one catches in her throat. Batman lays the kid down on the cliff-side and goes through all necessary first-aid steps even though his hands are shaking. She doesn’t think she has ever seen them shake.

Dick apologizes over and over, and only stops because Batman drags him into a hug. Tiny arms wrap around the giant’s caped back, and Barbara realizes all at once the gravity of whom he had almost lost. More than a partner, like what Robin is to her, but a friend.

* * *

“I’m a detective, damn it! Of course I know!”

Things are not going quite as he had planned. However he imagined himself breaking it to his only child that he knew she was sneaking out to be Batgirl, this is not how he pictured it. It’s even dicier when she admits she has been doing it for years. Jim knew without dispute that it had been happening for weeks. The logical leap that it had been happening for months was a guess all his own. But years? That’s a whole other animal.

Barbara is only sixteen. For her to have been doing the costumed gig for _years_ is a blow to Jim’s ego. How does a twelve-year-old sneak out of her window in latex every night without her cop father noticing? Was he really so oblivious, or was she really that talented? He suspects it is a bit of both, but he still blames that Grayson kid.

The problem is not that Jim doesn’t like Dick, but that his daughter _does,_ and just a bit too much. He notices the way she looks at him, studies him. She sees something in him she must like, because she has remained by Batman’s side despite his tough exterior and what Jim imagines to be a less-than-friendly interior. What other reason could there be?

* * *

Of course her dad knew. Barbara can’t even argue when he yells at her, because she understands how much she has made him worry. Eventually, they can talk about it without him losing his cool. He trusts her, and she really does believe it’s at least partially due to the fact he has seen Robin in action. If he can do it, so can she. They both know it.

The problem now is that, for some unholy reason spawning from the depths of presumptive fatherhood, Jim thinks she has a crush on Dick.

Really? That boy is a menace with a sharp tongue. He is as bratty as they come, which doesn’t surprise her considering both his recent breach into teenhood and the disposition of the man who has ostensibly raised him. Even if she were unlucky enough to fall for him, she wouldn’t be able to shake the suspicion that he has an eye only for his mentor, which is something she refuses to bring up out of principle. Well, that, and she doesn’t wanna broach a subject that could put Dick in one of his moods.

Mister Wayne does that enough as it is.

The discovery of Batman’s identity is not quite as thrilling as the storm he starts after the fact, with the lot of them milling around the Cave. They split in two separate directions: Dick padding after Bruce, and Barbara toward one of the many opulent souvenir displays. There is barely a breath of silence before Bruce begins chastising Dick for putting everyone in danger, and Barbara can’t for the life of her figure out how he has done so.

“When was she _supposed_ to find out, huh? She’s been with us for years, B.”

“She wasn’t _ever._ If you had been smart, it would have remained that way.”

Ouch.

“Come on, cut him some slack. It’s not his fault. I have half a brain, you know.” She rolls her eyes, cocks her hip, and turns the opposite direction while Bruce puffs up and fumes silently to himself. For a thirty-year-old billionaire, he’s got quite a list of things to be mad about. “I’m not going to tell anyone,” she promises once she finally decides she’s willing to face him again. “You can trust me. And you can definitely trust him. I’ve never met a man so ungrateful to be looked up to.”

Bruce and Dick both stiffen. Dick’s face is redder than his tunic from where he stands, arms crossed the same way they had been the night she first started patrolling. Bruce, on the other hand, has softened considerably within seconds. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. It isn’t that I am ungrateful.”

“He just worries about me too much,” Dick mumbles.

Barbara watches one of Bruce’s gloved hands move to rest on the back of Dick’s neck like it was second nature and wonders how many times they’ve had this conversation. Wonders how many times since that night in the rain Bruce has awoken in a cold sweat, thinking of what his life would be like without the kid. How many times before that, even.

Quietly, she returns to her survey of the Cave, completely immersed in her thoughts.

* * *

Jim catches himself craving a smoke.

Harvey rounds the cubicle to which Jim has sequestered himself. “How many days sober, eh, buddy?” he jokes. “Three? Four?”

“Forty-seven.”

“You poor bastard.”

True, he thinks, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. He has gone nearly two straight days without sleep, which is nowhere near his record but is nonetheless taking a toll on his abused, stressed body. “Whaddya want, Harv?” It is all he can do to stay sane at his job today, even if he can’t quite make himself look at the uncomfortable expression on his partner’s face. He knows exactly what Harvey wants.

“He hasn’t left yet. Seems to me like Batman could waste his time elsewhere—”

“I’ll handle it,” Jim snaps, pushing away from his desk so suddenly that Harvey takes an instinctive step backward. “If I don’t come back, it’s ‘cause I threw myself off the damn roof.”

He can feel not only Harvey’s, but the entire squadron’s eyes on him as he stalks out the back door.

The cool night air picks up to whip around his head within seconds of his full ascent up the fire escape, and it almost makes him wish it were enough to block out Batman’s words. Quick and honest, but no less stern: “She’s going to be okay, Commissioner.”

Jim reaches in his pocket, only to come up empty. “Y’know, it’s a bitch to climb that ladder these days. I’m getting old, Bats.” As expected, Batman stays quiet. “Times like these I wonder if it’s even worth staying on the force if I can’t even protect my little girl.”

He is prepared for multiple avenues of response, whether Batman defends himself, defends Jim from his own grapple with age, or harps about Barbara being old enough to take care of herself. Jim knows all of that. He _knows_ it was not Batman’s fault she wound up in harm’s way, just like he knows he can handle a ladder as easily as he still can a crook. He knows his daughter is twenty-four years old, and that means the years are passing him by like slips of paper.

None of those things are spoken. Instead, Barbara arrives, wheeling herself around the air conditioning unit as if she had been hiding specifically to reveal herself in this moment. Batman’s mysterious ways really did bleed outside the lines.

“Barbara,” Jim says, in a sad voice that carries all its weakness on the wind’s breath. “I thought you were still…”

“I got discharged early.” Anticipating his words, as always. Some things she did not learn from Batman, even if they were remarkably similar to his ways.

Jim still calls him Batman. He knows now who Bruce Wayne is. He knows all he needs to know, and yet there is still something inside him that wants to kick and scream and fight the realities that have fallen in place around himself.

Another genuine surprise is when Nightwing drops to the pipe above his head without a sound. The only reason Jim knows he’s there at all is because he is staring at the concrete beneath his own feet when the shadow appears. “Thought you were out of the picture, kid,” he says almost fondly.

Dick doesn’t give a response. Jim doesn’t expect one.

The new Robin materializes from behind Batman in as fluid a manner as his two predecessors, without all the smiles and “yes, sir”s. Jim doesn’t know this model’s name, and he doesn’t care to learn. Dick and the second, the one who died, both looked the same to him. This one looks the same. Jim doesn’t know anymore who serves what purpose, only that his daughter has been irreparably changed from her crusades against crime in a city Jim and Batman are supposed to be protecting. He doesn’t know how to muster optimism for any of the others when they aren’t enough to handle even the Joker.

There is _one_ difference between the boys Jim can keep up with, and he doesn’t like it, anyway.

Despite Nightwing’s long-running desertion of both Gotham and Batman, he slinks up to the shadowy creature’s side like he’s meant to be there, coming up to an uncovered, pale chin marred with the stubble of a man who has been struggling with something. Jim can’t tell if that something is Barbara’s plight or the way Nightwing slithers an arm around his lower back and leans in too close to whisper something in his cowl-covered ear.

“How old is he?” Jim asks, out of the blue. He sees them all go wide-eyed to hold his stare as it flickers between each of them. “I’m just wondering.” He flips a hand in a vague gesture while a muscle flexes in Batman’s jaw so hard Jim can see it twitch. Nightwing slips his arm out from beneath the cover of the cape and moves half a step away. “Twenty?”

Batman answers like a hanged man. “Twenty-two.”

“Right.” Jim opens his mouth to say something else, but Barbara—Batgirl, no, _Oracle—_ cuts him off with a rough and unfriendly call of the word “dad.” He sees the argument before she even makes it, but he doesn’t feel like listening.

“Baby, I need you to step back for a second.” _Step back._ The word choice stings his own sensibilities more than it does Barbara’s or Nightwing’s. Batman, however, seems similarly ruffled by the wording, if the way those white slits narrow and avert means anything. “I’m sorry,”—he’s not, he’s really not—“but this is inappropriate. When things inevitably collapse, what’re you going to say for yourselves? That it was just a fluke? A cock-up for the books because someone can’t have a goddamn mid-life crisis without dragging someone half his age to fuck—”

“ _Dad._ ” Barbara repeats, looking supremely offended by Jim’s wording. Batman and Nightwing are both staring guiltily at nothing, but in opposite directions. “What’s your problem?”

“I thought I made that perfectly clear.”

“What, that people grow up? That they find love and fulfillment in places you might not approve of?”

Defeat rains over him, sapping his energy when he asks, “Who are we talking about? Them, or you?”

When Barbara purses her lips, she looks so much like her mother. Even if he wants to believe that everything is okay, all he can see is his little girl, freckles and pigtails and lacy church socks. And beside her, that little boy, hair gelled back, one missing tooth in his cheek-dimpling grin.

Jim will give it a chance because, after all, they have surprised him before. It does not mean he’s going to like it.

* * *

The only noise in the Cave tonight is the unrelenting clacking of her typing, a mite slower than usual due to her tentative navigation of the chunky old keyboard. She mumbles to herself that she’s going to buy Bruce a new one someday, but she says that every time she visits the Manor and hasn’t yet followed through. It will happen, though. She is stubbornly committed to it now.

After a few more minutes of unusually peaceful work, she surrenders to her curiosity and wheels herself back to scan the Cave for any sign of activity. Usually, there is chaos of all breeds preventing this level of quiet. Jason entertaining Cass with his post-resurrection soliloquies, Duke and Dick dramatically recreating WWE fights, Tim and Damian squabbling on the mats, Stephanie hanging off Barbara’s shoulder asking her a million questions about the next mission… Barbara indulges in the warmth of those harmonious memories. Her own crazy family.

She moves across the platform to check the training room and comes up empty. Strange. She knows they’re all home, but they must have retired upstairs en-masse while she was absorbed in her casework, for some reason.

The reason makes itself apparent when she passes the showers, the locker room leaking steam from around the open wall leading inside. It’s not suspicious until she hears an intimately gravelly moan, and, yep, that was Bruce’s voice. She should have guessed.

Still, despite the comedy of the situation (which she was definitely going to tease them about later), she couldn’t help the fond smile that quirks one corner of her mouth.

_“I love you. I love you so much—”_

There’s Dick. He sounds completely breathless but continues to murmur his praises, regardless. It’s sweetly sentimental, even if Barbara is embarrassed to have overheard it. She snorts and wheels herself past the wall just in time for a particularly face-warming keen to spill out of him. Never let it be said that Dick isn’t vocal, she thinks, making it back to the computer to settle once more into the comfort of her solitary silence.

It is immediately interrupted by her phone vibrating. She gives herself a three second berth to get the sigh out of her system before she answers. “Hey, dad.”

“Hey, yourself. How is that case stuff coming along?”

“Really well. I should have it to you by Friday.”

“Roger. How’s the peanut gallery?”

Barbara snorts a soft little laugh. “Nutty.”

The long pause makes the next thing Jim asks entirely obvious, but she waits patiently instead of beating him to the punch. “How are, uh… How are the lovebirds?” An awkward huff of a laugh to cover up the fact he’s still a bit iffy on the subject.

“They are…occupied.”

Jim groans. “Didn’t need to know that. Guess it’s good they’re leaping into the early anniversary hours with no holds barred.”

She leans back in her chair to bask in the glow of the computer for a beat of silence, and then: “You remember their anniversary. That’s nice of you.”

“Yeah, well.” Jim yawns. Past that, she can hear his coffee pot bubbling, brewing his four a.m. fuel as religiously as ever. Out of everything that has changed, so many little things remain constant. “I still worry things are gonna go belly-up.”

“Things have gone wrong a lot of times. They always wind up gravitating back to each other, though. I think it’s beautiful.”

“And beautiful stars become black holes.”

“Wonderful aphorism, dad. Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

Jim sighs. “I’m trying. I really am.”

Barbara curls a lock of her hair between thumb and forefinger, staring at the ends while she loses herself in thought. Finally, she says, “I know. No one is asking you to love it. We’re all appreciative that you’re making an effort.”

This time, he chuckles, even if it’s not altogether humorous. She listens to him shuffle around and pour himself a cup of coffee before she bids him goodbye, and he tells her with a smile she knows he’s sporting because it is practically audible in its fondness, “That’s my kindhearted girl.”

Barbara barks a laugh of her own so abrupt she knows it must sound thunderous in Jim’s tinny, old-school cell. “I love you.”

“Love you too, baby.”

When she’s left in silence this time, it feels remarkably less like solitude. Amid her spacing out, she can see why: Her cohorts have emerged from the steam and shadows, Dick visibly embarrassed, Bruce thin-lipped.

“You could have warned me you’d be in here,” the former gripes. He turns to Bruce. “You knew, didn’t you?”

Bruce doesn’t answer, which is a yes. Instead, he saunters up beside Barbara’s chair and makes a point to look at nothing but the computer screen when he asks, “Was that Jim?”

She has to peer up several inches of gray sweatpants and tank top material to catch the flicker of the man’s grimace. “It was.”

“Is he coming to the gala?”

“Of course. He wouldn’t miss your phenomenal drunk act. It’s too funny.”

Dick laughs, muffled through his towel as he wrings out his hair. “So I take it you’re manning the security feed on that?”

She hums to the affirmative, watching Bruce watch Dick pad around like he has suddenly become unaware of her presence. Ass. Still, it’s admittedly charming to watch the twitch of a smile warm his otherwise stony face, especially with such a far-away look in his eyes.

Interrupting his pining, she unleashes a conspiratorial decree of, “You’d better save me some of that champagne this time, or I might forget to shut off the feed to the limo. I would hate for Tim and Damian’s filing duties to include footage of their father making out in the backseat.”

Bruce clears his throat. “Yes,” he agrees, hilariously quickly, “of course. I am…grateful for your foresight.”

She pats him on the arm, smirking something fierce. “No problem, B. Glad we can understand each other.”


End file.
